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The Hindu [India] June 19, 2004 Editorial REDUCE NUCLEAR RISK WITH PAKISTAN THAT NUCLEAR WEAPONS in the hands of India and Pakistan have made the region a much more dangerous place is in the nature of an axiom that only advocates of the discredited doctrine of deterrence will bother to contest. Nuclear weapons are weapons of mass destruction, instruments of genocide. In India, democratic opinion has always regarded such weapons with horror. However, subsequent to the Pokhran and Chagai explosions of mid-1998, there has been a concerted effort by the so-called strategic affairs community and by influential sections of the political establishment to legitimise, even glorify, nuclear weapons as acceptable means of achieving regional and global power. The sophisms of deterrence theory and false claims made to the effect that nuclear bombs are political weapons meant not for use but for self-defence and national empowerment have been recruited to the job of inuring public opinion to the real implications of producing, stockpiling, inducting and deploying these weapons of mass destruction. Until Pokhran-II, official Indian policy ranged itself firmly against the doctrine of nuclear deterrence. That position was subverted by a bizarre South Asian variant: a `minimum credible nuclear deterrent' not backed by any coherent doctrinal elaboration. An extraordinarily hawkish nuclear doctrine was drafted only to be left on hold; nobody knows what India's nuclear doctrine amounts to in practice. A fallout from Pokhran was that India's voice was virtually silenced on issues of global nuclear disarmament. Indeed its establishment became a late convert to the discriminatory global nuclear bargain, going so far as to welcome the National Missile Defence and Theatre Missile Defence proposals of the United States. There was also dubious posturing: India's nuclear weapons, it was claimed against the evidence, were not Pakistan-centric. The new Congress-led Government in New Delhi is yet to indicate its nuclear doctrine. However, the Common Minimum Programme adopted by the United Progressive Alliance promises that while "maintaining a credible nuclear weapons programme," the Government will evolve "demonstrable and verifiable confidence-building measures with its nuclear neighbours" and, on the international stage, "assume a leadership role in promoting universal nuclear disarmament and working for a nuclear weapons-free world." Against this background, External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh's informal advocacy of a "common nuclear doctrine" to be worked out among India, Pakistan and China holds much appeal; so far as the first two neighbours are concerned, it looks like an idea whose time may have come. The first ever official meeting between Indian and Pakistani experts to discuss nuclear confidence building measures, which opens in New Delhi today, provides an opportunity to identify common ground and work on a practical agenda to reduce nuclear risk in South Asia. In this connection, an article by M.V. Ramana and R. Rajaraman, both physicists, published on the editorial page of The Hindu (June 4, 2004) made two eminently sensible recommendations that "do not compromise national security in any real sense." The first is that the Indian Government should offer not to deploy nuclear weapons. The second is that it should stop installing early warning systems that clearly, in the specific South Asian context where the response time is dangerously short, increase the risk of accidental or unauthorised nuclear war. These two positive elements could constitute the basis of a common nuclear doctrine with Pakistan - and prove far more credible, as confidence building measures, than repetitions of the `no-first-use' mantra that has virtually no practical value. But a red herring must be got out of the way: the quest for some kind of nuclear parity with China, which is in a different league and poses no strategic threat of any kind - any more than nuclear weapons in the hands of the United States, the United Kingdom, France or Russia threaten India. _________________________________ SOUTH ASIANS AGAINST NUKES (SAAN): An informal information platform for activists and scholars concerned about Nuclearisation in South Asia. 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